Yahoo Media

If you have about a terabyte of spare space on your hard drive, why not fill it with the contents of the ever-memorable Geocities?

The Archive Team has saved the user-generated content of the hosting site after Yahoo! decided to shut down what The Los Angeles Times deemed, “the most significant virtual museum in recent history.” And they have decided to torrent Geocities in its entirety. All 900 GB of it.

“While it’s quite clear this sort of cavalier attitude to digital history will continue,” says The Archive Team on their website. “The hope is that this torrent will bring some attention to both the worth of these archives and the ease at which it can be lost – and found again.”

Email geotorrent@textfiles.com to be notified when it is ready.

Join Baratunde Thurston (left), The Onion’s Director of Digital and author of How to Be Black, for an entertaining look at creative social media campaigns in our Social Media Marketing Boot Camp starting February 16. Other speakers include Morin Oluwole (Facebook), Tim Devane (bitly), and SocialTimes' writer Devon Glenn.   Register now.

Yahoo! vice president and head of media James Pitaro (pictured) is going to Disney World, joining Disney Interactive Media Group as co-president, along with John Pleasants, who will also continue as CEO of Playdom, a social-gaming company acquired by Disney earlier this year.

Pitaro will oversee the Disney Online group of Disney-branded Web sites and social-media outlets, while Pleasants will lead the media giant’s digital games businesses.

While at Yahoo!, Pitaro had been involved in expanding original video, branded entertainment, editorial content, and the use of data to enhance the consumer Web experience. He led the expansion of Yahoo! Sports prior to being elevated to head of Yahoo! Media. Prior to Yahoo!, he served as head of business affairs for online music site Launch Media and practiced law at several New York firms.

At Disney, Pitaro will be responsible for enhancing the consumer experience on Disney-branded Web and social-media sites, including Disney.com and Family.com, and he will oversee Disney’s social-media marketing agency, DigiSynd.

Pitaro and Pleasants are succeeding former DIMG president Steve Wadsworth.

Read more

When Yahoo joined forces with Microsoft last summer, the Sunnyvale company signaled its intent to put technology aside and become a leading media company. Since then, CEO Carol Bartz has repeatedly said Yahoo wants to become the leader in online display advertising. Today, she stood up in front of the American Association of Advertising Agencies Media/Leadership Conference in San Francisco and restated that goal. “We want to be the partner that you come to,” she said.

But there’s one tiny problem with that vision, she acknowledged: Yahoo’s not the easiest company to do business with.

“There’s a lot of people who are saying, ‘You know, Carol, I’d love to do business with Yahoo, but you guys are a pain in the…,’” she said. “‘Hard to do business with, takes too long to make decisions. It takes too long to get information, and frankly, sometimes it’s just not worth it.’

“We know we need to be more responsive. We know we need to be easier to do business with. We have to get the friction out of our own system.”

Bartz pointed to the appointment last year of Jeff Russakow as senior vice president of customer advocacy as demonstrating Yahoo’s commitment to improve in that area. “He is working on customer support functions, simplifying the entire experience, speeding the business processes, streamline billing,” she said.

And for those who still run into problems, Bartz spelled out her email address and said they could contact her directly.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/yodelanecdotal/ / CC BY 2.0